


Oh, Let's Get Lost

by Rae_Gar_Targaryen91



Category: Bandersnatch - Fandom, Black Mirror (TV), Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Genre: Bad Poetry, Bandersnatch - Freeform, Bauhaus mentions, Be gentle, Black Mirror - Freeform, Black Mirror Imagine, F/M, I don't write often, Insomnia Cure, Jazz club setting, Mentions of Timehopping, Pretentious descriptors, Reader Is A Lounge Singer, Reader-Insert, Sure to Put You To Sleep, Will Poulter - Freeform, colin ritman imagine, dream weirdness, idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 02:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rae_Gar_Targaryen91/pseuds/Rae_Gar_Targaryen91
Summary: Colin ends up in a local jazz club as a means of dodging the rain. There’s something about the singer that strikes him as familiar. A truly timeless quality, he supposes.





	Oh, Let's Get Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I should be doing about a thousand other things. But then I was struck with a thought… So here we are. In any case, this probably came out really dumb. And I’ve never claimed to be a writer, beyond some questionable poetry. But if you like it, or would be interested in offering thoughts, please let me know! 
> 
> Pairing: Colin Ritman x fem!Reader (It’s left vague. Feel free to make this a self-insert! It’s sort of what I was going for anyway.) 
> 
> Warnings: None? Mentions of dream weirdness and timehopping. Some Colin Ritman chain-smoking. A couple of drinks. Bad poetry. Insomnia-friendly reading, sure to put you to sleep.

Colin wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up _here_.

The jazz club was dark, the air heavy and permeated by thick clouds of cigarette smoke. He supposed he could appreciate that.

This was no Asylum -- no punk rock club. He’d ducked in to get out of the rain. He supposed, begrudgingly, he’d be more at home in a record store while waiting for the downpour to pass. Thumbing through titles that promised either heavy synth, or the thrumming guitar that would accompany some Bauhaus-esque post-punk number.

Still, with the emergence of New Romanticism that the 1980s promised, he supposed he could appreciate a resurgence in the relevance and beauty of jazz music, even if it wasn’t what _he_ listened to in order to “get into the flow.”

Huffing, Colin plopped into a lounge chair in view of the center of the room. The _clink_ , followed by the flicking _thwip_ , of his lighter as he puffed on a new cigarette was almost instantaneously soothing to his frazzled nerves and rain-wrought annoyance. He leaned forward in his seat, swiping a hand through his peroxide locks. Roughly, he tugged crumpled, slightly damp, notes out of the back pockets of his high-waisted plaid bondage pants. No time like the present to get a little work done, he supposed. His almost indecipherable etchings held all the promise of another hit game. After the whirlwind success of _Metl Hedd_ , he felt a secure, smug sense of unstoppability. He truly was quite enjoying _this_  lifetime.

He sat in the dim, smoky room, otherwise occupied as other patrons filtered in and out, They chattered lowly, the zip of gentle jazz filtering through as time pressed on. Of no bother to him, really. But the passage of time so rarely bothered him. He ordered a few drinks, smoked, and idly wondered if the people snobbishly opining on Ellington would have heart attacks if they’d heard Black Flag, the Cure, or Tomita.

The smooth rumble of a voice announced the hour’s lounge singer, though he hadn’t heard the name. A tune he vaguely recognized as familiar began, though he couldn’t think of where he would have heard it. Or when. When seemed the better question.

_Let's defrost in a romantic mist,_

_Let's get crossed off everybody's list._

_To celebrate this night we've found each other..._

_Oh, let's get lost…_

He looked up, the singer’s voice surrounding his person like a suffocatingly familiar fog, drowning in the up-keyed Chet Baker cover.

_Her_.

Her smile, painted red, propped up in a tip-lipped grin.

Her hair, shining softly under the lounge’s dim lighting, ethereal.

Her voice, clear and lilting, passing over the notes with an almost easy depth and passion.

Her eyes, so sharp and astute, had a glassy, timeless quality. As hers met his, he was struck with the sudden feeling they evoked: timelessness-- no, _transcendence_. He was struck with the thought. Perhaps she, like him, had explored the paths and possibilities, the snaking roots that a life free of the shackles of time promised. _Had_ _she_?

Had he met her before? Strange that he was the one asking that question.

He huffed quietly, sardonically, to himself. If you had asked Stefan, it was Colin who typically held answers to questions like that. Yet here he was, quizzical and intoxicated, full of unexpected astonishment at the vocalist before him. Timely and timeless, he thought, that he would see her today of all days. That the rain would drive him in here.

_“Oh, let’s get lost.”_

Her song finished, and he joined in the smattering of applause provided by the relatively small crowd, still staring at her.

She stepped down from the stage and began a circuit of the room-- idle hellos for familiar faces, a throaty chuckle for a quick joke.

At last, she stopped in front of him. He flicked the cover of his lighter as she approached. _Clink. Thwip_. Should he speak first?

Colin wondered: What do you say to the woman you could swear you have seen before. Hadn’t you? Or felt before? Whose presence is reminiscent of a dream-- familiar, but the exact remembering is beyond comprehension. Like... tugging a loose thread. The memory of the dream unravels, until you’re left with nothing. Nothing but words of vague description and the ideas, the feelings it left you with upon your waking.

No. Not subtle, Colin. Don’t lead with that.

She blinked down at him through his cloud of smoke. Lips still tipped in not-quite Cheshire grin. She truly was a vision, he thought, until…

A honeyed voice…

“Hello, Colin. Nice to see you.”


End file.
